The world has changed a lot. But sometimes I wonder if marketing has caught up.

Most people think there are three ways to do their marketing. Hire freelancers, do it yourself, or hire an agency.

If you hire a bunch of freelancers to do the various parts of your marketing….

When you hire a band of freelancers, whether you mean to or not, you’re running your own marketing agency.

On top of running your business. But marketing is most likely not your business. So why are you running an agency?

No way would I attempt to run an accounting firm. Because I am definitely not an accountant. I hired an accountant. {I have some ideas on how this industry could work better, too, but we’ll save that for another time.}

If you do your marketing yourself….

When you do your marketing yourself, it can be as one of my clients perhaps indelicately put it, “amateur hour.”

You put in a lot of time for not a lot of results. You’re always worried about what you’re doing right or wrong, how rapidly everything’s changing {Where’d all my clicks go? What do you mean, ‘new Facebook algorithm’?}.

You stress about whether you’re doing the most important things for your business right now or dropping the things that will actually make a huge difference.

You waste time and energy on throwing spaghetti at the wall. Because marketing is not a magic pill. It takes lost of trial and error to get it right. And if you're starting with little or no marketing experience, you're going to throw a lot of spaghetti at that wall before you figure it out. Let's not waste the spaghetti. You could be feasting on that spaghetti.

If you hire a marketing agency....

When you hire an agency, you put in a lot of money and hopefully {but not always} get a lot of results.

First of all, there are lots of different kinds of agencies out there. Some will do everything for you. That's what I'm talking about -- branding {yes, you need this, and it’s more than just logo design}, marketing strategy {yes, you need this, though you might not even see or understand the plan they create}, social media management, website build, blog management {they might outsource the writing}, email platform launch, and beyond.

You won’t have to have a hand in any of it. You’ll save a lot of time. Not so much money.

And should you ever decide you want to make a change, well...it’ll be a challenge. You’re all-in with this agency and everything they built for you. You don’t really know how it all works. And they didn’t teach you. Because that’s their job. They’re not in the business of putting themselves out of business.

What if there was a new way?

What if you didn't have to choose from either a band of merry freelancers, or figuring it all out on your own, or reaching deep into your pockets to get the power of an agency behind you? What if you could get agency-level expert guidance, but in a format that you can understand?

So if you want to hire freelancers, you not only know what you should be hiring them to do...you know why that’s the right thing to do for your business, and how to tell if what they’re doing is working.

And if you want to do it all yourself, you have a plan to follow. And maybe even an empathetic expert just a phone call or email away whenever you get stuck.

That’s why 929 Marketing is here.

I believe that solo entrepreneurs and small businesses should have a new choice. You should be able to own your own marketing. So whether you want to take advantage of the gig economy or do it yourself or have the option of getting some stuff done for you but not everything, you can choose what suits you.

If you think so, too, let's talk. Start with a Breakthrough Session to knock out your most pressing problem. And choose where to take your marketing adventure from there.